Saturday, 3 April 2010

Sour Cream Bundt Cake

with chocolate, pecan and cinnamon streusel layers.

This is a huge cake, just right for Easter celebrations, but it will be the last large cake for quite a while, as our expanding waistlines must be reigned in! Future bakes will be smaller, and aimed at The Chief Tester (my son) rather than being something OH and I want to eat.

If I made this again, I would try to get the two streusel layers further apart. It was something of an experiment, as I was using a crumb cake recipe in a bundt tin, and didn't want a crumb layer as either the first or last layer in the tin.

I used Ina Garten's Sour Cream Coffee Cake as the basic recipe, but used some cocoa in place of some of the flour in the streusel, and added 100g of chocolate chips to a portion of the cake batter, as well as arranging the layers differently. I also used pecans instead of walnuts. As we don't have cake flour available in the UK, I substituted just under half a cup of cornflour (50g) for some of the flour. Once the cake was cool, I added a chocolate glacé icing.

Ingredients

Cake:

175g unsalted butter

300g sugar

3 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

300mls soured cream

275g plain flour

50g cornflour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

pinch salt

100g plain chocolate chips

Streusel

50g light muscovado sugar

50g plain flour

20g cocoa

1 teaspoon cinnamon

40g cold unsalted butter

50g finely chopped pecans

Glacé Icing

50g icing sugar

1 tablespoon cocoa

warm water as required

Method

Preheat the oven to 170C and butter and flour a 10-cup bundt pan.

Make the streusel by rubbing the butter into the flour, sugar, cocoa and cinnamon, then mixing in the nuts. Set aside.

To make the cake batter, first mix the salt and raising agents into the two flours, then sift together to distribute everything evenly. Cream the softened butter and sugar together until well mixed. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, with a teaspoon of the flour mixture. On a low mixer speed add the soured cream and flour mix in alternate portions, also adding the vanilla extract at this stage. Use a spatula at the end of mixing to make sure everything is well mixed and there are no traces of flour remaining.

To layer the cake: Put roughly a quarter of the batter into the bundt tin, dropping small amounts evenly around the ring, and spreading with the back of a spoon, being careful not to disturb the flour lining the mould. Sprinkle half the streusel mix over the cake batter. Next spread half the remaining cake batter into the tin, followed by the rest of the streusel mixture. Stir the chocolate chips into the remaining portion of batter and spread evenly into the tin.

Bake for 50-60 minutes, until a test probe comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes before removing the cake from the tin. finish cooling the cake on the rack.

When completely cold, make the chocolate glacé icing by sifting the icing sugar and cocoa together and mixing to a thick paste with warm water. Drizzle this over the cake with a spoon or icing bag, then carefully move the cake to a serving plate. I found it best to build up the icing in layers.

This cake is as delicious as it looks. The sour cream helps to give a moist tender crumb which is not too sweet while the layers of streusel add more sweetness, an intense chocolate flavour, a touch of spice and some crunch from the nuts.

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